v e r s e
by kismet-wayfinder
Summary: Kairi scanned her eyes over the diary entry title. "Number one – delirium," she said with a bit of a laugh, before starting to read the book of verses of her self-history that she'd written so that she'd never forget her memories. Never again. SoRiKai.
1. Chapter 1

_**sora-riku-kairi | AU | rated pg14 | romance/friendship/angst **_

_**[By AU I mean there will of course be plenty of KH/Disney characters/worlds but the story will be totally different and if that bugs anyone well I guess this AU isn't your thing? But if you do check it out, thank you so much! Pairings will be Sora/Kairi/Riku, any mix/match thereof and potentially others (possibly Roxas/Xion later). There will be romance in this story, but no actual lemons. Just a heads up. [/AN]**_

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><p>The sand was warm and inviting as the thinly framed young woman lie there on her back, the heels of her sandals just reaching the water. The sun was beaming directly over her barely clad body so it was lucky for her that she wasn't one to burn easily. Her strange shade of red hair fanned out behind her head, one of her small hands grasping aimlessly onto a fistful of stand right beside her. The other rested across the white, lacy cloth of her sundress.<p>

"My name is Kairi," she said aloud to herself, lest she forget. Again. Never mind it being an odd practice, she made sure to once a day at least – just in case. Heavens forbid she find herself with them again, only to still not realize who they are, right in front of her own two, shimmering blue eyes.

Squinting up at the sun with one eye open, Kairi mouthed the name of one of her best friends, before switching eyes and mouthing the name of the other. Afterward she brought her hands together, clasped over her heart as she willed these two - wherever they might be - to realize that despite the shortcomings and failures on her part, that she loved them more than they'd ever know. . .

Her memories had been scattered, mismeshed flypapers before – that was all. And they were finally all complied now, like in a notebook, both in her head and in the journal she kept on her person. Little good it did her now, stranded in some world between light and darkness; living out day after day and night after lonely night on a mock island of one she once truly lived, loved and laughed upon.

Groaning, the fair-skinned girl rolled over onto her stomach there on the sand, her sight adjusting to look down at the literal notebook lying there, closed in front of her. She'd rather they show up, take her hand and carry her away from whatever kind of mirage place this was . . . but they hadn't yet. They wouldn't be doing so today, either. Maybe they'd never be coming. And with that last thought Kairi quickly opened the lilac book, squeezing her eyes tight as she shook her head.

"_No_," she said to herself firmly, refusing to give in to that last, obnoxious little voice in her mind that would seek to diminish the tiniest bit of hope and light she did have left in her heart. "They'll find me," she reassured herself instead. "I might be a hundred by the time they do, but I know they'll find me. Just – just as long as I can keep our memories alive . . ."

Flipping past the first blank page, Kairi scanned her eyes over a dotted number and a diary entry title. "Number one – delirium," she said with a bit of a laugh, before commencing the reading of the book of verses of her self-history that she'd written all on her own during the days so far spent on this in-between island, just to make sure she could never forget them.

Not ever again.

**d e l i r i u m .** **1**

Kairi had felt surely delirious when the idea first came to her. Legitimately delirious, as it so happened, for the blue-eyed girl with hair the hue of sangria red had fallen ill while at school. A bug had gone around and though Riku and Sora – her best friends - had impressively lucked out and dodged the little flu flitting around the campus, Kairi had drawn it to herself like a moth to a flame.

_Ugh_, she inwardly groaned as she lay in her bed, head propped up atop two stacked pillows; she'd just awoken from an all day long event of dosing off, only to get stuck somewhere between deep sleep and near-consciousness. This annoyed her greatly. She felt convinced that the whole ordeal would pass by her all the more quickly if only she could fall to sleep and _stay that way_ for a little while.

"Miss Kairi, your friends have come to visit," called her nanny through the door then, just as the nightgown-clad seventeen year had made to roll over onto her back from her side.

_Or not_, she thought to herself. _Oh well – I probably wouldn't be able to really sleep like I wanted to anyway, right_? _At least they might be able to cheer me up then – I haven't seen either of them in three days . . . _

"Maybe she's still asleep, boys," the nanny's voice said then, in a noticeably quieter voice. "Maybe you should come back another time, Sora, Riku."

"No!" Kairi exclaimed, quickly sitting up and swinging her legs over the side of the bed. "I'm not asleep! Guys don't go ye – _aughhhh_!" Her words getting lost as they dissolved into a high-pitched scream, Kairi soon found herself lying face first on the floor, her legs from the calves down all tangled up in her bed sheets.

"Kairi, what happened?" exclaimed Sora then through the door; a turn of her doorknob and then Riku's voice called out, "I think your door's locked, Kairi – are you alright in there?"

_That's a good question_, she thought to herself, before pushing her achy and tired body up from the ground as quickly as she could manage to, which – being in the state that she was – actually ended up being a relatively slow process. "I'm fine. I just fell," she called out as she got to her feet.

"You didn't twist something did you?" Riku asked her then, before Sora's voice was heard: "Ma'am," he said to the nanny. "Is there a key to get in with?" And then Riku spoke again, saying, "Yeah, what if she fell on her leg the wrong way and can't get back up right now?"

"There's a right way to fall on your leg, Riku?" Sora asked aloud, and Kairi stifled a laugh as she approached the door; the laugh wasn't born solely of Sora's sarcasm, but rather also stirred within her due to the simple fact that these boys – her boys –were acting so worked up over nothing, really. It didn't make her laugh because it was amusing but rather, a laugh played at her smile because it was her instinctual reaction to feeling heart-warmed by something.

_They've always been this way,_ she thought to herself. _Them worrying about me – me worrying about them . . . _It was one thing, she figured, to be like that when you're unsure about, well, pretty much the entire universe; for instance, if your friends were out there, somewhere in that universe, and you didn't know, then it followed quite logically that you'd be hypersensitive to wondering about their well-being and about looking out for them.

But really, Kairi, Riku and Sora were back to being normal for the most part, if you could call that. Their biggest sources of stress came in the form of tests and pop quizzes at school. Yet here the imprinted natures to always be on-guard to how one another were doing were still perfectly present, completely intact.

Maybe it was weird – or – maybe it was so perfectly normal. Kairi didn't know and Kairi didn't care.

"I'm up – I'm opening the door so just hold on," she said aloud, one of her small hands grasping the doorknob as the other took hold of the somewhat rusted lock built into the knob itself; with only a hint of trouble at doing so, achy and tender, an in much need of a restful sleep Kairi was able to pull the door open and summon all her inner strength to contort her mouth into a large, beaming grin as her sight fell upon the two boys standing before her; her nanny, newly hired, stood between them with a wary expression on her face.

"Erm, Miss Kairi, here they are," the older, portly woman needlessly pointed out. "Do you need anything right this moment?"

"Oh, no thank you, Myrta – I'm all set," Kairi answered her, before gesturing for her guests to follow her on into the bedroom.

"Yes, Miss Kairi," the nanny replied, before pulling the door to a close and walking away to head for the main room of the mayor's grand house.

"Soo . . . how's it been, guys?" Kairi asked as she turned away from the door to face her bed as Riku and Sora sat down upon her overturned and strewn-about bed clothes.

"It's been okay," answered the taller of the two; Riku, who looked at least three years older than he actually was due to his height and build, shoved some of his silvery-white hair back from his eyes as he shifted a bit on the bed and cast a glance in the direction of a spiky-haired brunette, whose school uniform – in contrast to the muscularly fit Riku's – seems almost a size and a half too big on him. "Right, Sora?"

"Er, yep, I mean, other than you being sick and not around for the past few days, everything else has been more or less . . . normal."

Raising an eyebrow, Kairi shifted her weight from one foot to the other as she stood there before her best friends. She eventually crossed her arms and gave them a lopsided smirk. "Two words:" she said. "_Spill it_."

"Spill what?" Sora asked in a genuinely blank, clueless sort of voice.

Glancing to Riku, Kairi caught his eyes with her own and she attempted to read them with all the perplexity and frustration it takes a person to try to decode the ever-changing pattern of the waves of the sea itself. She ultimately decided that something had happened; there was definitely a furtive sort of look in Riku's eyes – some sort of secret was being kept, she just wasn't sure what it was.

"_So-_r_a_," she said in a sing-song sort of voice, the cerulean-eyed Kairi stepping up to him there on the bed before sitting down carefully, purposely placing herself within a proximity of him that would (with any luck) unnerve him enough to tell her what was going on.

"Yes, Kairi?" he answered her in a slightly nervous-sounding voice.

"I was talking about the whole 'oh everything's been normal; everything's been okay' stuff that you and Riku were just talking about," she answered him. "I saw the way Riku kept looking at you, like he was trying to catch your attention. Maybe he was trying to get you to uh, not say something?"

"I don't think he was doing anything like that at all," Sora replied in a bit of a hurried, bumbling way.

A particularly awkward silence followed this, one that caused Sora to give a strangely forced cough to break it up, and when that didn't work, he gave a little chuckle and said, "_So_ . . ."

"So . . .?" Kairi returned, thoroughly not amused about being potentially left out of the loop.

"_Soooo_ I'm just gonna go get a soda, 'kay? Kay."

"But Sora –" Kairi began to say, her hands at the sides of her hips as she stood up and called after him, but Sora flew right past her anyway and was soon gone through door before she could've tried to stop him.

"You know, I'm kinda thirsty, too," Riku said as he stood up from the bed, as well.

"Don't even think about it," Kairi said at once, stepping forward to place her hand against his chest, halting him. "I've been in near-solitary confinement since I got sick. You guys haven't been over in three days, and now you're being weird and running from the room. I mean, what's going on?"

"We did try to see you," Riku said to her then, before taking a step back and sitting down on the bed again. "

"Oh. You did?" the redhead replied, moving to sit down beside him. "So, they made you go away on account of me being sick?"

"Yeah, they said you needed to rest," the silver-haired teenager explained. "So Sora and I didn't try to visit yesterday after what happened the day before, but we decided to try again today, hoping you might be feeling better."

"Thank you," Kairi said with a kind smile. "I do feel a lot better off now than I was feeling a couple days ago . . . you know though, I can think of something that would make me feel one-hundred percent better."

"What's that, Kairi?"

"You could . . . tell me what you and Sora were acting so weird about earlier."

Riku gave a sound of annoyance at being so easily led back into the situation he wanted to avoid. "It was nothing, Kairi!"

"You're lying, Riku!"

"Hey guys," Sora said then, pushing open the partially left open bedroom door wider with an elbow as he stepped into the room, juggling three soda cans. "I brought you back some soda, too."

"Thanks," Riku and Kairi said in unison, though neither would look at the other.

"Here, Kairi," the spiky-haired Sora said with a smile, placing a peach flavored soda into her hand and then turning to Riku, handing him a cherry-flavored one.

"Huh . . ." Riku said, slowly standing just as Sora sat down on the other side of Kairi with his own, orange-flavored drink in hand. "Thanks and all again, Sora, but I don't really care for cherry flavor; I'm gonna go grab a different soda."

"But it's your favori –" Sora began to protest; Riku, however, bolted through the door before he could finish his train of thought.

"Right," Kairi said with a note of finality in her voice as she also stood up and went to the door, though she simply pushed it closed and listened to the locking mechanism click into place before turning to look back at Sora. "_You_ – you're going to tell me what's up."

"But, but –" Sora sputtered.

"Right now."

"But it's just – Riku and I agreed to –"

"Agreed to what?" Kairi asked in a sharp tone of voice as she marched toward the bed, not stopping until her legs bumped into Sora's bent knees.

Slowly looking upward at his friend, Sora felt as if Kairi was towered right over him. On her face she wore a stern look, and it wasn't an expression she often took to showing off. It looked, to Sora, strange – an unwelcome look, a foreboding and intimidating look. He gulped, and then sighed, as if in defeat.

"Riku and I were just hanging out yesterday after school and we were thinking about the dance next week and he told me – Riku that is – that he wanted to ask you to go to the dance with him –" Sora said incredibly quickly, blurting out his words without pause for breath, not stopping even when the girl standing before him flushed a nice, deep pink color all over every visible inch of her skin.

" – and I told him, 'Oh? But _I_ was gonna ask Kairi to the dance'; 'When were you gonna ask her?' he said to me then. I told him how I was going to ask you the day before but we weren't allowed inside to see you. Then I asked, _'Why_? When were _you_ going to ask her?' and he said 'Monday' and I said to him, 'Ha! I win!'"

Even as Sora continued rambling on, Kairi felt like she was having a very, very weird dream. It was one of those dreams where everything is rushing around you, beyond you, through you – but you stay put, gravity holding you perfectly in place as the invisible waves of all that is surreal crash over you. Feeling as flushed as ever still, she moved over and sat down beside Sora on the bed, staring blankly ahead with widened eyes as Sora turned slightly to better face her.

"Well Riku didn't like that. He said for me to go ahead and ask you to the dance myself," he said.

Furrowing her brow slightly, Kairi glanced back at him.

"He said I could ask you to the _dance_ because _he'd_ just wait and ask you to be his girlfriend afterwards."

Kairi's eyes grew wider than before.

"I argued that of course _I_ wanted to ask you that instead –"

Surely she was imagining all this.

"He told me it wasn't happening, though, and so I told him to shut up. He said 'Make me', and then . . . well, then things got a little weird."

_THEN they got weird?_ Kairi inwardly thought, leaning back away from Sora just a fraction of an inch, seemingly taken aback.

"Well . . .he said it like a challenge – _'make me shut up'_ – I tried to tackle him and wrestle him to win the argument. Somehow. But he ended up pinning me instead! He had this smirk, you know, all '_Ha_. You can't make me. _You – can't – make – me_!'"

Kairi had since leaned back in toward Sora in the moment or so that had since passed by. She was very caught up in this bizarre story, even if she didn't feel sure enough to consider it real just yet.

"I figured that the only way to make Riku shut up would be to make his lips stop moving."

A thought then struck Kairi, and while it was wild and crazy and surely impossible, she placed one hand on her forehead just above her big eyes, while the other reached forward and grabbed onto Sora's forearm. "You guys . . . you didn't . . . ? No _way_!"

It was Sora's turn to blush now, and it was a deep red color, too. ". . . yeah, we uh, we did kiss. It was kind of short," he said sheepishly. "But yeah, it just sort of _happened_, you know? I kissed him and then we talked about it right after 'cos, well, at first we were all freaked out."

Kairi slowly moved her hand away from her forehead though she kept her hand on Sora's arm. She couldn't believe her ears.

"When we talked," Sora then said. "Riku and I figured that, well, we liked the kiss . . . but we knew we still wanted you too, Kairi – we still wanted to ask you out regardless."

There was a couple seconds' silence and stillness, and then a startling – albeit slightly muffled – voice rang out through the other side of the locked bedroom door. "Sora – I'm going to _kill_ you!"

"Riku!" Sora gasped, scrambling up further onto the bed.

Kairi, on the other hand, simply stood up and walked over to the door, light giggles escaping her all the way. Unlocking the door again, she pulled it open to reveal a startled and nervous looking Riku, his same old cherry soda still in hand. "So I take it you were listening in?" Kairi said to him, a hand moving to her hip.

"Just near the end, I was . . ." answered the young man with aquamarine eyes, though he averted his gaze from that of Kairi's.

"I see," she said simply, before reaching forward and taking hold of Riku's free hand. "Come on, sit with us."

Riku did as asked, letting Kairi first reach beyond him to push the door to a close again with her fingertips before then tugging on his hand and guiding him to the bed, where Sora was still half-hiding, now attempting to do so behind a small tower of wobbling pillows.

"Sora, you dork," Kairi said as she plopped down onto the bed, her hand releasing Riku's to instead playfully push Sora over.

Landing sideways across the bed, Sora gave a bit of a laugh himself, before crawling over to her and kneeling on the other side of her. "So . . . really, Kairi? You're not angry with me and Riku?"

"Why would I be?" she asked simply, before emitting a small shriek of surprise as Sora took his turn to give her a small shove, causing her to fall back across the mess and tangle of bed sheets and blankets.

Laughing a bit, eyes closed, Kairi soon blinked a few times, only to glance upward and find Sora's face hovering over her, appearing to look upside down from her perspective. Also hovering over her was the face of Riku, who had the faintest of smiles on his lips as her eyes locked with his and then also with Sora's. She wasn't sure why, but from the pit of her stomach arose a flutter of sorts, and it travelled slowly upward, moving beyond her bosom and up the sides of her neck before finally showing itself on her face in the form of a sun-kissed glow of a blush.

"Guys . . ." she said quietly, tentatively, glancing away when she felt one hand on her stomach, and then another. Her eyes looked to find that Sora's palm was pressed against her middle with Riku's hand resting slightly over it, his fingers on Sora's fingers, the rest of his hand pressing against Kairi, as well. She smiled, finding her voice again.

"Riku – Sora – would you guys be . . . be my . . . I don't have a word for it. Just . . . instead of it being some struggle or decision to make, what if the three of us just . . . _were_? You and you and me, and me with you both and you both together; just, all of us – I mean, we've known each other for what feels like forever and . . . we love each other, right?"

Kairi glanced upward to watch as Sora and Riku glanced at one another.

"Of course we love each other," Sora said with a smile.

"Yeah, we do. It kind of goes without saying," Riku agreed with a smile of his own and soon he and Sora both were glancing back down at Kairi, their hands still touching as they simultaneously lowered their faces toward hers.

Kairi felt completely dizzy-headed and breathless as she watched Sora and Riku draw closer and closer to her. She felt tempted to flutter her eyes closed as they did so, but at the same time she felt a need to keep them wide open in order to take in every second of this moment in every which way she could.

"To answer your question, Kairi," Riku murmured, now that the corner of his mouth just above hers. "It's a yes. Right, Sora?"

"Right, Riku," Sora said, his own lips just above the opposite corner of Kairi's mouth.

The corner of Kairi's lips twitched upward into a smile upon hearing this, and then she gasped softly, feeling Sora's and Riku's lips finally press against her own, both at the same time. Kissing back as best she could, she moved her hands to place them atop those of the boys' – _her_ boys' – one hand over Sora's and one hand over Riku's.

_Maybe I _am _insane_, she thought to herself. _But I wouldn't change this for the world . . ._

**. . . . . . . . **

Feeling the breeze of the sea pass over the calves of her legs, Kairi inwardly shivered as she turned another page. _beached_ it read. "Heh, how fitting."


	2. Chapter 2

Kairi sighed as she bit down on the lower right corner of her lip. A bit of a smile wanted to play at the edge of her mouth otherwise but a certain sense of sadness was keeping it at bay. _Just as well_ she figured, before raising her eyebrows and giving a dry sort of hollow laugh; _Might as well get on to reading entry number two . . . _

**b e a c h e d . 2**

It had been a few days since the initiation of Kairi's idea of her and Riku and Sora being a kind of three-sided, polygonal "couple". They had survived their first collective day back to school as such and no one had noticed anything different about them. Since when had it been abnormal for them to help each other carry their books to different classes, anyway? And so what if they sat together for lunch – that was above and beyond par for the course with them. Besides, no one else knew or noticed when Kairi's leg bumped into Riku's or when Sora's foot bumped into Kairi's – so what did it matter?

Now though, after the sun had set and no one was to be seen on the sands of the beach other than these three, things were a different story. Lying on their backs and gazing upward, they watched as the stars began to alight in the deep bluish-black sky, one by one by one, like little lanterns being lit. Riku lying in the middle, he had one arm beneath Kairi's waist, his hand at the end thereof curled 'round a bit to hold her at her side. His other hand was being held by Sora, their fingers intertwined tightly as Kairi absentmindedly ran her fingers through Riku's hair.

"The sky is strangely pretty tonight," she said with a kind of sigh in her voice. "I can't even remember it ever being _this_ beautiful."

Giving a low sort of chuckle, Riku gave her side a playful squeeze and said, "Are you sure it's not just because of us, Kairi?"

"Are you trying to get her to call you beautiful, Riku?" Sora asked in a teasing voice.

Cutting his eyes toward him, Riku sighed apathetically and said, "She knows what I meant. Everything seems more 'right' now, since we decided to stop fighting and just let things be the way they should be."

"Ah. Yeah, they do. You're right," Sora said.

"Makes sense," Kairi added, her fingers still running themselves through locks of silvery-white as she smiled faintly. "I know I'm just . . . _happy_ now, all the time."

Hearing this made Sora break out into a smile of his own, and he let go of Riku's hand to instead prop up on his elbow and glance over at Kairi, and then back to Riku. "I'm happy if you're happy," he said to them.

"Oh, I'm sure we're all plenty happy," Riku said as he felt Kairi roll toward him, her head coming to rest against his chest; he began to smile, but then gave a small yawn as well. "Well, happy and tired, apparently."

"Our last math class together was brutal, remember?" Sora said to him, easing down from his elbow to also rest his head on the other side of Riku's chest, before reaching over and placing his hand against Kairi's available arm. "We have every right to be tired."

"And with a science class like mine?" Kairi added. "I'm exhausted."

"Maybe we should just rest for a while then," Riku suggested, one arm looped around Sora's waist, the other hand tangling itself up in Kairi's hair. "Then we can go back home and get a good night's sleep. Besides, the dance is tomorrow night."

Hearing this, Kairi smiled and nuzzled her face into Riku's chest. Her world, for the moment, was completely content; entirely complacent to the idea of anything causing a bump in the road.

**. . . . . . . .**

Shivering a bit as she came to the end of the second journal entry, Kairi glanced back over her shoulder to catch a glimpse of the sun as it disappeared beyond the horizon, seeming to melt right into the endless ocean waters right before her eyes. She decided that she should really retreat to the little cave home she'd made for herself over the past howeverlong it'd been since she'd been what, swept away to wherever she was?

And so she gently marked her spot in the journal and got to her feet, before moving a hand down to dust the sand from both her kneecaps. The sand had probably crept all over her body, really, but no matter – the floor of her humble as could be abode was made of sand anyway its own self, right?

Shivering once again against the ever coming presence of coming nightfall, Kairi slipped behind the nature-made curtain of moss that separated the cliff-side indent from the rest of the beachfront. Once within, she crept over to a small pile of sticks that she used nightly to make a fire with, just to a keep herself a little extra sunlight until she was really ready to put her head down to go to sleep for the night at least.

Making sure to keep the journal plenty far away from these sticks, the bony-kneed girl soon knelt down and went to work on rubbing the sticks together for friction; in no time at all she had a decent sized blaze a' going. Smiling at her work, she crept over to the other side of the cave wall and sat down upon a bed made of gatherings of fallen fig leaves. Reaching outward once more for the journal thereafter, she opened it up across her lap to find that she'd opened it right to the space where she'd just left off moments earlier.

"Very well then, on to the third part," she said aloud to herself, before snuggling in a bit with the book and reading onward.

**t h e r e 's a w i l l – t h e r e 's a w a y . 3**

Kairi, by all rights, felt almost completely dejected and depressed as she sat on her bed with her back flat against the wall, knees draw up to her chest as she hugged them, her head resting atop them. Tonight was the night of the dance at school. She'd been looking forward to it for ages now; she'd even already gone out and gotten a nice new dress to wear. It was a shame she wasn't going to get to go now, after all that.

_You failed to return home all night long! You were – you were off with those two boys of yours; I know you've been their friend for most of your life, Kairi, but, my dear, we were oh so worried sick! We had no idea where you'd even gone. And the shock of not finding you safe and sound in your own bed this morning? . . . let's just say that I love you, my daughter, but that you need to be punished for what you've done – acting so irresponsibly, and at your age, too, why you're almost grown!_

. . . I'm sorry, but I'm afraid you're grounded for the rest of this week, Kairi. And yes, that means missing tonight's dance.

Her step-father's words still rang out in her ears with anger, hurt and concern in them. She felt deep down as if she couldn't really blame him. It had been very unwise on her part to just let herself drift off to sleep on the sand, regardless of the circumstance. And now she had been grounded and she had no idea if Riku or Sora had been punished, also.

From where she sat she could see her dress hanging in the closet, as its doors were open. Glimmering in the glow from the moon-shaped nightlight plugged into her wall, the black sequins that trimmed the edges of its brown fabric shimmered off and on again, seeming to somewhat dance about amongst the other hanging clothes. Sighing sadly, she drew her knees in even more tightly against her chest before resting her head back against the wall, right beside a window.

"Kairi!"

Giving a jump and grasping at her bosom, the red-haired girl moved away from the window when she heard the sound of a pebble strike its glass, followed by the sound of a rather close in proximity voice also calling her name from beyond it.

"Oh, it's you," she said seconds later, as she moved to unfasten locks on hinges and raise the window itself. "You just gave me a complete heart attack, you know!"

"Sorry, sorry – had to get your attention to let us in though, didn't I?" Riku answered her in a calm voice, before reaching forward from the tree branch he was perched upon to find a way to climb on into Kairi's bedroom via the window.

"Yeah, well, you're lucky it didn't get anyone _else's_ attention," Kairi said darkly, offering Riku a hand as he stepped on through the window and onto the bed, followed by Sora too. "I'm grounded until the end of the week."

"We figured," Sora said. "We are, too."

"And yet here we are," Riku added. "Until they figure it out and nail our windows shut so we can't get out anymore."

"Don't even joke about that," Sora replied. "It's bad enough we got in trouble _this_ time. I'm never chancing staying on the beach so long again. I still can't believe we didn't wake up sooner."

"What I don't understand is why we couldn't have at least put off our groundings until after tonight's dance," Kairi piped in, kneeling on her bed as she closed the window.

"Well the school dance would have been okay," Riku mused aloud as he got off the bed. "But I don't think all is lost." Walking across the floor to reach a laptop placed upon a writer's desk, he turned it on and opened up its media player application. "Sora thought of an idea on the way over."

Looking from Riku to Sora, Kairi asked with much curiosity in her voice, "What is it you thought of?"

"Well," he said, scratching at the back of his head with a sheepish grin on his face. "What do we need for a dance, really? We need music and we need fun and we need each other. We have all we need right here already don't we?"

Returning Sora's smile, Kairi clasped her hands together excitedly, her eyes dancing. "Hold on then – just a minute."

"Uhm, okay," Sora said, the music now playing none too loudly as Riku walked over to stand beside him; exchanging shrugs, they waited there as Kairi disappeared into her walk-in closet, closing its doors behind her.

Much murmured talking to herself and many random sorts of noises followed, but finally, after a few minutes, Kairi re-emerged from the closet wearing not her nightgown but instead a knee-length dress. Smiling, she approached Riku and Sora and gave an awkward sort of giggle. "I bought this for the dance but, uh, I need some help zipping it up in back."

"Turn around then," Sora said to her, and when she did he reached for the zipper located just above her waist and then paused, slowly moving it along its lined teeth to the top, doing it slowly as to let his eyes trail a surreptitious glance at her bare skin.

"Thanks," Kairi said quietly, before turning around and taking a step back, and then curtseying. "So – what do you think?"

"You look great, Kairi," Sora said.

"Yeah, you really do," Riku agreed.

"'Kay," was all she said in return, but the creeping blush on her face spoke volumes for her alone. "So do _you _– er – well, you both always look great, but, yeah. Heh. _So_, care to . . . dance?"

"Sure," Sora eagerly agreed, before giving a chuckle and adding, "I'm not sure if I can do it right, though."

"It's not too hard, but, I'm no expert myself so it doesn't matter much," Kairi assured him, reaching forward to take his hand.

"Okay," Sora said nervously, approaching her more closely.

"Place your hand on my side," Kairi instructed him, and he soon did so. "And now I'll put my arm around your neck . . . then we just sort of move around and sometimes turn or just, whatever; it depends on the song too."

"This seems complicated," Sora said, his nerves failing to be calmed.

"How hard can it be?" Riku said, stepping over behind Sora and reaching a hand around to place it over both his and Kairi's, which were still clasped together.

Giggling, Kairi rested her chin on Sora's shoulder and cut her eyes upward, meeting Riku's gaze. "Poor Sora," she said. "How will he ever learn to dance this way, Riku?"

"It's not that different," the silvery-haired teen insisted, before moving his other hand around and placing it against Kairi's side, just above the place on her hip where Sora was still keeping his hand. "Just move along with the music, Sora."

"Hmm," he murmured, closing his eyes as he slowly moved around in time with the song playing, Kairi's chin still resting gently on his shoulder as Riku rested his own chin atop Sora's head. Eventually he opened his eyes and smiled. "Hey, this isn't so hard to do after all."

"Told ya," Riku said, before moving away from the pair.

Looking over to him, Sora gave him a smile and mouthed the word "thanks". Riku nodded his head, a small smile on his own face. Falling back into rhythm, Sora and Kairi continued to dance through the rest of the current song and then the one that came after as well, before Riku cut in to dance with her his own self. Ultimately, Kairi got Sora to dance with Riku as well and, once that ended, they had begun to consider dancing together – the all three of them - once again.

And then there came a knock at the door.

"Get in the closet!" Kairi hissed to Sora and Riku at once. "Dad had my lock disabled for the rest of my grounding! Go! Hurry and hide! I'm supposed to be in bed!"

"Kairi?" a voice called out through the door.

Scrambling for the closet, Riku and Sora soon found themselves standing together within the confined space of darkness, doors closed tightly before them. From without the closet Kairi jumped onto her bed and then panicked, realizing that it would look all too suspicious if she was happened to be seen in her dance dress.

"Oh jeez . . ." she murmured to herself, slipping the sequined straps down from her shoulders and then painfully and awkwardly managing to slide it all the way off before burying herself beneath two layers of quilts.

"Are you asleep in here?" asked the voice of Kairi's stepfather, followed by the sound of the doorknob turning, and then, footsteps as he stepped a few paces on into the room. "Ah, you _are_ asleep. Well I guess there's nothing wrong with a little music playing while you do . . . sweet dreams, Kairi. Sleep well, young one."

And then, just as quickly as he'd come, the man was gone, door closed tightly behind him. Sighing heavily in relief, Kairi sat up in her bed before giving a start and pulling the quilts up around her bosom, which would have otherwise only been obscured from view by a lilac-colored camisole. "Guys – the coast is clear, just – can you give me a minute?"

"Okay," Sora's voice answered her through the closet doors.

"Thanks," Kairi said, before slipping out from the bed covers and grabbing her dress, stepping into it. "Okay, you can come out now."

The doors opened and Sora stepped out, only to trip over his own shoes and crash land to the floor.

"You okay?" Riku asked him, quickly reaching down to grab his hand and help him up again.

"Yeah, I'm fine," he said, before laughing sheepishly. "But that was a close call, huh?"

"You're telling me," Kairi replied, stepping up to them. "Uhm . . . I kinda sorta slipped out of my dress just in case he tried to wake me up – didn't wanna look suspicious in my party dress; he might've thought I was going to try to sneak out and go to the dance. So needless to say, I need help zipping it up again."

"Makes sense enough," Riku said with a shrug, glancing downward as Kairi turned to place her back to him. "Uh-oh," he then said. "Uh . . . your zipper looks kinda weird."

"Weird how?"

"Well maybe I'm wrong but . . ." Riku reached out to the zipper but found that while it was partially zipped upwards halfway, it was also stuck at this position, unwilling to budge up any further. "Yeah, no, it's stuck, Kairi. I'm sorry – I can't get it to move."

"Oh no, it must've happened when I shimmied out of the thing all so rushed and unable to unzip it before I tried to take it off," Kairi lamented, covering her face with her hands. "I'm sorry our whole little dance-thing here got messed up on my account."

"Aw, come on, Kairi – nothing's been messed up. Don't think like that," Sora said to her in a reassuring voice, his hand reaching forward to reach the back of her bare shoulder, gently rubbing her there.

"Sora's right," Riku said, stepping around to be in front of Kairi.

"You sure?" she replied quietly, leaning her forehead to rest against Riku's chest as he placed a kissed atop her hair; from behind her, she could feel Sora's hands loop around her waist. These actions made her feel more reassured; more certain things really were okay after all.

**. . . . . . . .**

Marking her spot and closing the journal, Kairi hugged it to her chest and cast her eyes toward the ground. She'd give anything for a hug or kiss from them now . . . her boys.


End file.
